Origami

[+Poidawg]

I just saw the Origami being featured on the news. The newest thing in portable computing and GPS. I was wondering who was thinking about getting one when they come out.

Edited March 10, 2006 by Poidawg

[+TheGeoHunters]

I'd love one but the problem is that they all run about $2000. I looked at the OQO ( www.oqo.com ) and it was limited on its expandability. Technology advances so quickly that you will spend $2K on one of these and they are outdated in a year, and they don't have any migration or upgrades for them. A year from now the whole package changes to another manufacturer.

I think they are great, I use laptops and tablets with my job every day and something smaller is great but you really can't take those into the field, one drop and they are trashed.

I'll stick with a ruggedized GPS....

[+user13371]

[+SgtSue]

Think they said on the news it would get down to $500 or so in another year. It could be great if you could install GSAK on it as well as the GPSr and routing software. I'm looking at it to see how well it works and waiting for the price to go down before I do anything.

[+Renegade Knight]

I'll be watching them. They are too big to replace a PDA and too small to replace a laptop. However they have a lot of potential. Especially as an inside the vehicle solution for mapping. For that i think laptops are too big (though a used one with a 12" screen is fairly cheap...)

[+Poidawg]

That is what I was thinking, once it gets down in price, to have it on the road when travelling might just be the thing. I heard it comes with GPS installed so that would cut out a step right there. Of course some of these caches are way out in the boonies at it might be hard to go online out that far, but as long as the GPS aspect was working well, you could cache with the most updated info and log on right afterward to post your find...

[+oneeyesquare]

Several different models coming from different manufacturers. I like the Asus one myself. Bluetooth is listed as a required spec from M$oft, So i'd use my Globalsat. A bit big for woods walkin, IMO. Awesome for car nav. Probably keep the iPaq around for cache nav.

 

I'm guessing I'm gonna slide into one of these and give the Sony Tg250 to the lovely wife and drag the UMPC off to work everyday instead. Handy!

 

BTW, the price point on the first run UMPC's is supposed to be $600 -$1000. The OQO is not technically the same class of device. Yoda-esqually"Much smaller than the UMPC it is, hmmmm????"

 

The Apple fanboy cartoon is just sad...Little more than two weeks ago, all the Maccult were hoping for a Mac tablet to be anounced by His Steveness... Sorry. $99 iPod case.

Edited March 11, 2006 by oneeyesquare

[+caderoux]

Fujitsu P1510D - mini tablet - got it last year. Basically an ultra small full-blown tablet PC. So small and light that it fits in my Camelbak while caching, and I've even used it on the trail to look up something which wasn't in my PDA for some reason. Bigger than Origami, but not by a lot.

 

Look forward to Origami, though probably will wait for 2nd or 3rd generation.

[+JohnnyVegas]

I have no interest in them, I read the article yesturday.

Did I say they were crap know, I can think of better things to spend my money on.

If they were around $500.00 I might give them some thought.

Edited March 11, 2006 by JohnnyVegas

[+TotemLake]

I prefer the OQO over the MS UMPC. It has a built in slide out qwerty keyboard to overcome some of the shortfalls of handwriting recognition and lost stylus syndrome.

 

True, there is no upgrade path, but these days, it isn't nearly as critical as it was 3 years ago. The technology is current enough you can easily get 5 years out of a device like this before even worrying about it. Disk size is more than adequate, memory is plenty for most applications and it fills the niche between PDA and laptop in the same manner the laptop filled the niche for mobile computing.

 

I'm about 80% justified towards picking up one of these. I just can't get past the 10% threshold to 90% go-for-it yet.